barbed wire
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: Draco's touch is cold and light like raindrops. Run, Ron, run. Slash


barbed wire  
By: ShinigamiForever  
  
Warning: Slash. Ron/Draco, one sided, Draco/Harry, both sided.  
  
Disclaimer: the song "8" belongs to Sunny Day Real Estate. HP belongs to (of course) JK Rowling.  
  
A/N: This song has a beautiful beginning part, and a really awesome rest of the song, but the CD from which this was pulled off of (Batman Forever) has some songs that are even better. I still hate Ron/Draco, but this demanded to be written. Aye, all must surrender to unknown muses.  
  
  
---  
  
  
-rain song...  
so beautiful, my dear  
overcome...  
hmm...-  
  
I run because when I am running, my body doesn't have enough moisture to expel tears. I run because when I am running, my mind is too occupied to think about him. I run because when I am running, the world is simple and uncomplicated and there is nothing but running and stopping. I run. There is no more to say.  
  
I was right about them being happy together. They were meant to fit against each other, arms wrapped and tight and warm, one puzzle piece against another, a sliding lock and key. They are effortless together. I have no right to disturb them. I was right about them being happy.   
  
Sometimes, I really hate it when I'm right.  
  
She said, "Ron, now that Harry and Draco are together, you really should get along better with him." I said, "I know." She said, "So stop acting like a sulking three year old!" I said, "I am not." She said, "Yes you are." I said, "No, I'm not," and stormed out.  
  
The Quidditch field is not round. It is square. Rectangular, but not round. So I am running in rectangles, my feet sending frantic messages to my brain to keep running, stop thinking. The scenery around me becomes blurs, an artist's pallet of oranges and reds and grays. Sky is reduced to gray blue. Trees are reduced to black smears. And the rain, the rain that is falling, becomes no more than smears of water, cold and wet and comforting against my skin.  
  
-rain song...  
so beautiful, my dear  
overcome...  
drives me crazy-  
  
He had said, "Ron, I love him." I had said, "I know that, Harry." He had said, "Oh." I had said, "I don't blame you." He had said, "Ron?" I had said, "I'm fine." He had said, "If you say so."  
  
Some nights, I mash my head against the pillow and cry strange strangled sounds ripped from my throat, salty moisture splashing against my cheeks and onto the pillow. I can taste them, bitter and cold, my tears are cold. They're supposed to be warm. They're cold like the smoke from the cigarette tip. Me, I am warm, and I am burning out. My tears, they are cold and they are dispersing, wisps of gentle white drifting away into nothing.  
  
He makes those same strangled noises when Harry kisses him, except he is halfway torn between want and more want, while I am torn between despair and more despair. The darkness of rooms where they think they are unwatched, and I have my ear stuck to their door, listening to the sounds of their kissing, their beauty, their love. I am part of the walls now, my eyes are closed but my ears see what my eyes cannot, and my fingers are clenched against my palms with the same ferocity of their touches.   
  
-who can decide?  
will i decide?  
set in stone to split the night-  
  
Once, he rested his fingers against the crook of my elbow, a light careful touch, trying to smile.   
  
Harry found me in the bath tub that night, the water up to my chest, shivering with the heat long gone cold. The crook of my elbow had been scratched so much there was bloody lines where my nails had drawn, ragged, against the skin. My fingernails left dreadful marks that showed up red and dark the next morning, scabs all over them. Harry didn't ask about them. I didn't say anything.  
  
His fingers are cold and gentle and feathery like the petals of a flower, the slightest touch sending shivers down the rest of your skin, light fingers that seemed to be forged out of snow and warmed by autumn sun, the makings of butterfly wings casted inside. Like the water streaming down my skin when I try to lose myself in the bathtub.   
  
His fingers are like raindrops.   
  
His touch is falling on my skin.  
  
-put a word to these.  
put a word to these.  
this thin line greased  
i can't see.  
fingers stain my gold...-  
  
Run, Ron, run. Run, Ron, run. See Ron run. Watch Ron run. The incessant nursery rhyme rampaging through my ears.  
  
Run, Ron, run.   
  
Run, Ron, run.  
  
Feet pounding, head spinning, hands pumping, mind screaming, heart beating, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.   
  
Run, Ron, run.  
  
Maybe if I run enough, I'll forget about him, just for a few seconds, and all I will be able to think about is the running and the running and the running, the physical need to stop and the oxygen running through like a rush of intoxication, or the feeling I get whenever he happens to glance at me.   
  
Run, Ron, run.  
  
Maybe, just maybe, if I run enough, when I stop, I'll be too tired, too cold, too wet to think about anything but the running, the endless repetition of patterns.  
  
Run, Ron, run.  
  
-sweet clover  
sweet clover  
sweet clover  
sweet...-  
  
He had said, "Ron." I had said, "Don't call me by my first name." He had said, "Weasley." I had said, "What, no insult?" He had said, "Harry told me to be nice." I had said, "I don't want you to be nice."  
  
What I should have said is, I don't want you to be nice on Harry's account. I want you to be nice on your own account. I want you to be nice for me. Not for Harry.  
  
Harry who stands between us. Harry, who I love with all the world, but I do not love him as much as I love you. Harry, who is so happy and who has everything, has always had everything I wanted, has always been the one everyone chose. Harry, who he loves.  
  
That is not to say, of course, that if Harry was not there, he would love me instead. You can't second guess things like that. Draco loves Harry, and even if they didn't have the opposite attracts factor, they would still be beautiful and together.   
  
And I am left running.  
  
-what side you on?  
what side you on?  
silence near the battle cry  
hollow victory...-  
  
He is color and lights entwined, too much static and too clear. He is falling and flying and all the things I never could be. He is elegance and arrogance and cold cold frost on painted china sky. He is pinpoints of light in the distance. He is early morning sunlight.   
  
He is ivory and sapphire and all the beauty in the world.  
  
And I? I am thornbushes and barbed wire and fallen grace. I am October autumn and rainy day sidewalk and streams in a turbulent muddy rush. I am foolishness and stubborness and warm warm coal left out to freeze. I am bare trees stretched across the horizon.  
  
I'm not his opposite. I am just all the things he should never have the need to be.  
  
There is nothing more overwhelming than the feel of skin on skin contact. What Hermione doesn't know is, I rouse him into a fight so much so that I can have the feel of him against me, even if it is in a fist fight. If we fight, I would get to touch him, his face, his liquid skin against my rough unpolished skin.  
  
But if I walked away, what would I get?  
  
-which lie do you own?  
which lie do you own?  
when lines divide i walk away  
blazing sun sets on my back...-  
  
In the distance.  
  
He is watching me from across the field. His gray eyes fixed in the rain on me, fixed like the usually are on Harry's face, fixed like they would never move again. That's the feeling he gives me, all the time, that whenever he looks at you, he would never look away, would never want to see anyone else. I fool myself into thinking that, and then glances can last eternities.  
  
Hands shoved into pockets. Hair plastered down in the onslaught of rain. Robes a heavy covering on his shoulders. Neck streaming with water. Water. Rain. Him.  
  
He waits until I am close to him. Draw back, Ron. I can't. Run, Ron, run. I can't. It's him. I know.  
  
-sweet clover  
sweet clover  
sweet clover  
sweet...-  
  
He says, "Why?" He is quiet, subdued, colored out, faded. Why? The rain, the rain, the rain.  
  
I shrug. He says, "I'll run with you." I say, "Did Harry make you do this?" and start to run again, arms pumping against the rain, trying to escape. He reaches out to grab my wrist.  
  
His hand is viselike and still gentle, the curve of his palm, the lightness of his fingers. Like the rain, and he is like the rain. Petals falling in the rain, petals on my cheek. Petals wrapped around my wrist.  
  
He says, "No." We stare at his hand on my wrist. He says, "I wanted to come."  
  
-[i can't]  
wait...  
[despise them, inside them]  
inside them i am...-  
  
His hand still on my wrist.   
  
Centuries of safeholds can fall now. Empires can decline now. The world can end now.   
  
His hand is still on my wrist.  
  
I have forgotten how to pull away. An earthquake under my skin, shaking, shaking.  
  
-[i can't]  
wait...  
[despise them, inside them]  
inside them i am...-  
  
Running is, after all, a very mindless thing. It requires your feet to move in a rapid movement, up and down, bent at the knees. It requires your arms to move along with them, back and forth, bent at the elbows. It requires the mind to let go and the body to relax and tense at the right moments. Running is habitual.   
  
Running is a metaphor to all things.  
  
He runs like he flies. He does not connect himself to anything, he floats away delicately as if his feet never touches the ground. He lets go of everything, grasps only himself, and hurls himself into a movement even Newton cannot explain.  
  
Running is also a metaphor to him.  
  
-[i can't]  
wait...  
[despise them, inside them]  
inside them i am...-  
  
I am running, because when I run, I do not have to think about reality. He is running, because when he runs, there is something ahead of him he must catch.  
  
And yet we run together.  
  
He calls out, "Ron."  
  
I call back, "Just keep on running."  
  
The rain falls on my face like his touch, and he becomes everywhere.  
  
Run, Ron, run.  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N: You've come this far, won't you leave a review? 


End file.
